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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26728147">Like Shooting Stars</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/QuillAndInkWrites/pseuds/QuillAndInkWrites'>QuillAndInkWrites</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Critical Role (Web Series)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>5+1 Things, 7+1 Things, Actually 7+1 but there's no tag for that, Autistic Caleb Widogast, F/F, Fluff, Gen, Idk y'all this is just cute and lighthearted with a touch of angst and smooching, It doesn't really show up beyond him being nonverbal but, M/M, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Minor Jester Lavorre/Beauregard Lionett/Yasha, Mollymauk Tealeaf Lives, Mollymauk Tealeaf/Caduceus Clay if you squint real hard, Multi, Nonverbal Caleb Widogast, Other, POV Multiple, it's still a constant of mine</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-09-30</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-09-30</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 09:13:57</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>3,088</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26728147</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/QuillAndInkWrites/pseuds/QuillAndInkWrites</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Mollymauk may be dead, but he will still stay with his friends. He loves them, after all.</p><p>OR,</p><p>Seven moments the members of the Mighty Nein have with Mollymauk beyond the grave and one time he isn't.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Beauregard Lionett &amp; Mollymauk Tealeaf, Caduceus Clay &amp; Mollymauk Tealeaf, Fjord &amp; Mollymauk Tealeaf, Fjord/Caleb Widogast, Fjord/Mollymauk Tealeaf, Fjord/Mollymauk Tealeaf/Caleb Widogast, Jester Lavorre &amp; Mollymauk Tealeaf, Mollymauk Tealeaf &amp; Caleb Widogast, Mollymauk Tealeaf &amp; Yasha, Mollymauk Tealeaf/Caleb Widogast, Nott | Veth Brenatto &amp; Mollymauk Tealeaf, The Mighty Nein &amp; Mollymauk Tealeaf</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>20</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>144</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Like Shooting Stars</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>The title is from Airplanes by B.o.B. ft. Hayley Williams because I am an incurable nerd and there's a reference in the song to something in the fic. I will not apologize.</p><p>Anyways, yeah, the Mollymuse is working overtime lately lmao. I would not expect this amount of fanfiction with this frequency very often.</p><p>Enjoy!</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>1.</p><p>The first time it happens, no one really notices.</p><p>“Hi, Molly,” Jester murmurs into the cold air around her. She’s bundled up in a warm winter coat, furred and hooded, the gentle snow dusting her hair and horns with white. She’s sitting on a bench outside of the bookstore she had followed Caleb and Beau to, having just ducked out while they browse.</p><p>From a closed pocket Jester takes out a deck of cards held together with a piece of worked leather, almost like a belt. She opens the clasp and pulls the top card, turning it over to show the art Molly had never done.</p><p>“I finished your deck,” she says to the cards. “I hope you like them. I did my best on them.” </p><p>She smiles as the wind picks up, blowing snow into her face.</p><p>She sits there and talks to Molly until Caleb and Beau come out, heralded by the chime of the bell on the door. Then she puts away the tarot deck and stands up, brushing snow off of her lap and horns, the wind following her.</p><p>If she’d looked, she would have seen the two bare footprints pressed on the snow in front of the bench, with no being to make them.</p><p>That is how it starts.</p><p> </p><p>
  <em> 2. </em>
</p><p>“We’re getting tattoos?” Beau says with a grin and an eyebrow raised and a curling of her fingers into fists. “Sick.”</p><p>The wind follows the women onto the ship, dragging and pulling at their clothes in miniscule amounts, dancing around them like an old friend.</p><p>Beau hands Orly the Tortle a card from Jester’s finished deck and a description of a lost friend’s tattoo, raw emotion and grief and memory written into her skin. The wind sighs around her and whips warm through her hair.</p><p>Hours later, with a shimmering tattoo on her neck, Beau swears she hears a bittersweet and elated laugh on the wind.</p><p>She chalks it up to the tattoo making her sentimental and swiftly blinks the dust from her eyes.</p><p> </p><p>3.</p><p>Fjord, one night, remembers with frightening clarity that Summer’s Dance had been Molly’s sword. Summer’s Dance, which he had thrown into lava just months past.</p><p>“He would have found that <em> hysterical</em>,” he mutters to himself with an edge of disbelief and humor, laughing to himself.</p><p>Caleb taps his shoulder from next to him and Fjord rolls over to face Caleb in the dome. Caleb rolls over as well.</p><p><em> Was? </em> Caleb asks with both hands.</p><p>Fjord chuckles again. “I threw Molly’s sword into a pool of lava,” he says.</p><p>Caleb lets a rush of air out through his nose in a silent laugh. He adds, “Didn’t you swallow your previous sword in a dream, once?” and Fjord has to muffle his laughter behind his hand so as to not wake up the rest of the party.</p><p>“I did,” Fjord almost wheezes, still covering his mouth with a hand. Beau shoots him a look from where she is sitting up, on watch for the next few hours.</p><p>“A regular circus man,” Caleb says with a wry grin, signs sharp and laughing.</p><p>Fjord laughs out loud at that, and the rest of the party wakes from their almost-sleep in an instant.</p><p>“Oh, shit!” Fjord says, still laughing. “I’m so sorry.”</p><p>Jester rolls over onto her stomach and elbows and asks what’s so funny, nose scrunched up, as Beau facepalms from her sitting position. They all see the grin Beau doesn’t try to hide.</p><p>“According to Caleb,” Fjord says slowly, still laughing in the back of his throat, “I’m a circus man.” Then his laughing grin turns into a sharp grin in anticipation of a joke in the middle of the night.</p><p>“I imagine Molly would have tried to kidnap me, if he found out.”</p><p>As the laughter of the Mighty Nein echoes up into the stars, Fjord swears he hears an eighth laughing voice join theirs, faint and not quite real.</p><p><em>Just a dear memory,</em> he thinks, and smiles a little wider.</p><p> </p><p>4.</p><p>It is a warm spring day in the Empire, fields of green coming alive and reaching for the sun.</p><p>Yasha’s only mission is to kidnap some of those flowers for her book.</p><p>As she looks around the field the Mighty Nein have stopped to rest in, the midday sun on his shoulders, she doesn’t see any flowers that she hasn’t seen dozens of times before. Not one to give up, she gives a quick word to the others (and a quick peck each to Jester and Beau) and wades into the grass in search of colors to add to her rainbow of pressed pages.</p><p>She doesn’t find much.</p><p>Bunches of Plains Coreopsis scattered through the long grasses, yellow and tall in their groups, but she already has a few in her book. The flower of a wild carrot, which she hasn’t seen before, but quickly figures out when she looks closer and has the good idea to gently pull up the roots. But she has looked for fifteen minutes already and hasn’t seen anything else of note that she doesn’t already have.</p><p>Then the wind whips through her hair in a sudden gust. It isn’t slightly cool, like the gentle breezes of that day have been, but sudden and warm. It reminds her of the warmth Jester has when she pulls the group into a hug she can’t possibly fully wrap her arms around, and when she snuggles into Yasha’s side under the dome, wrapping her arms around Yasha’s waist.</p><p>The wind whips around her again and, in a decision Yasha couldn’t quantify later even if she tried, Yasha follows the wind. It blows again, a little softer, and Yasha almost feels like it’s pleased.</p><p>She keeps walking where the wind carries her for just a few minutes, but already she is further from the cart than she had ventured without it guiding her.</p><p>The wind stops, circling around her in a gentle whisper, still as warm as it had been from the beginning.</p><p>Yasha looks around.</p><p>There, just at her feet, hidden from her before by the tall grasses, are flowers.</p><p>Shorter ones than most wildflowers, almost identical to daisies she has seen before but for the purple color of them, almost a lilac in its lightness. Larger, taller flowers, similar as well to daisies but for the cone-shaped middle. These ones are purple too, with a dark orange-red center. And, last of all, stems with multiple beautiful, bright red flowers on each, petals shaped like the wings of a dragonfly.</p><p>She picks three of each with a quiet awe and thanks the earth for the generous gift.</p><p>Then she returns to the cart, a gentler warm breeze drifting around her, satisfied and pleased.</p><p>“Caduceus,” Yasha says, the moment she is back at the side of the road where the rest of the party sits.</p><p>“Hm,” he replies, looking up from his cross legged position. “Oh, those are pretty flowers. Do you need something?”</p><p>Yasha says, “The wind helped me find them. But it didn’t… Feel like the wind, either.”</p><p>Caduceus looks at the flowers for a long moment.</p><p>“Do you think it’s the Wildmother?”</p><p>Caduceus shakes his head, a thoughtful expression on his face.</p><p>“No,” he says, “but those colors remind me of the stories of your old friend, don’t they?”</p><p>Yasha looks at the flowers held in her hands with gentle fingers. “Yes,” she says quietly, thoughtful now just like him. “They do. Thank you, Caduceus.”</p><p>The wind smiles as it stands at her side.</p><p> </p><p>5.</p><p>Yasha does not share the possibility on the wind, as it were, with the Mighty Nein. The Mighty Nein, being incurably nosy assholes, find out anyway.</p><p>This means that when Veth is about to steal the house key (and pocket change) out of a nonbinary half-Elf’s pockets, the sudden unnaturally cold wind that whips at her makes her stop in her tracks. It’s only quick thinking and the telegraphed patting of her pockets before she turns around that means she just narrowly avoids being caught.</p><p>Once in the cover of the mouth of the alleyway around the corner, Veth swears with a string of colorful phrases in Halfling.</p><p>“Superstition is Fjord’s thing,” she hisses to herself, and then shuts her yap tight the second a cold wind brushes her for the second time in as many minutes.</p><p>“<em> Fuck, </em>” she squeaks, and desperately goes over the events of the past hour of following the half-Elf, trying to figure out what the hell had just happened.</p><p>It’s only when Veth sees her (former, apparently) mark laugh and give a dark-skinned human a smiling kiss at the corner of the block that Veth figures it out.</p><p>“Is this because they’re <em> happy? </em>” Veth demands incredulously, voice rising in both pitch and volume.</p><p>The wind blows warm and laughing.</p><p>“What the <em> fuck! </em>”</p><p> </p><p>There is another house key under the doormat. Veth curses loudly and continuously when they find it.</p><p> </p><p>6.</p><p>Caleb knows, passively, that Yasha and Veth were accosted by a strange wind that seemed to carry with it the ideas of Mollymauk. He knows, passively, that Beau seemed to have experienced something similar. He knows, from a murmur into his hair as Fjord had unrepentantly stolen his body warmth under the dome a few nights back, that Fjord had thought it was just his imagination that had laughed like Mollymauk to his circus joke a few weeks prior.</p><p>It is entirely different, however, to know it <em> actively</em>.</p><p>Caleb does not think of the gentle, warm wind on his fingers at first, only turning another page of the book in front of him. The book is not yielding the results he wanted. It is no matter, he will find a more fitting one deeper in the library. Then it brushes his hands again, warm and soft, and he jerks his head up. Caleb remembers, then, with sudden clarity: <em> Wait. I am in a library. </em></p><p>Suddenly he is aware of the wind.</p><p>The wind brushes his hands again, gentle as Fjord’s hands in his. Gentle as Mollymauk’s had been.</p><p>“You do not feel like a normal wind,” he signs to his book, a smile tugging at the corners of his lips.</p><p>The wind runs through his splayed fingers and Caleb looks in the direction it flows, curiosity overtaking any doubt or gentle sadness. It is blowing in the direction of the bookshelves to his right.</p><p>Caleb closes his book with a bookmark (not with its own page, like the cruel-to-books Beauregard may do) and follows the wind further into the shelves. It blows his hair forward from where it is falling out of his bun and he resists the urge to laugh.</p><p>After a meandering path through the library, the wind stills. Caleb feels like the knight in a fiction book he had read once, guided by his dead father’s soul to rescue his friend from a cruel prince.</p><p>“Here?” Caleb signs to the shelf the wind has led him to.</p><p>The wind circles him and vanishes.</p><p><em> Here, then, </em> he thinks. <em> But which book? </em></p><p>The question is not on his mind for long, though. In front of him, almost at eye level, is a book with a bright red embellished spine that seems to demand his attention almost like a Tiefling he had once known.</p><p><em> That is perhaps too obvious, my friend, </em> Caleb thinks with a silent laugh and an amused expression.</p><p>He pulls it out of the shelf and a purple flower comes out with it, drifting to the floor. It is the same as the small purple daisies Yasha’s wind had led her to.</p><p>Caleb thanks the wind and checks out the book.</p><p> </p><p>7.</p><p>The last time the wind greets them, Caduceus wants it to. He heats up a pot of water and boils tea in his beautiful teapot, sitting and humming as it steeps. Then he pours steaming tea into two teacups sitting on a stump.</p><p>Only a few seconds later a gentle wind picks up around him, manipulating the steam from the two teacups before settling. If one wished, they could imagine the wind settled to sit in front of its teacup.</p><p>Caduceus smiles.</p><p>“Thank you,” he says to the other side of the stump, where the other cup of tea sits. “Your presence has made our friends happier. I’m sure you’ve noticed by now.”</p><p>Caduceus pauses and takes a sip of his tea.</p><p>“I know I didn’t know you,” he says, “but I would like to think that you would like me and that I would like you. You seemed like a lovely person.</p><p>“If you’re wondering about the tea, it’s you. Well, the soil above you helped. I thought you would find that entertaining,” he says, and chuckles.</p><p>Then he sits in silence for a while with the still air, enjoying his tea. As he finishes the cup, he pauses. “If you would like, I would be glad to do this again.” Then, humming to himself once again, he puts away his cup and teapot.</p><p>As he goes to put away Mollymauk’s cup he stops.</p><p>There is no tea left.</p><p>Caduceus laughs and says, “I’ll be sure to make you some more.”</p><p>The wind presses a kiss to his cheek as he goes.</p><p> </p><p>+1</p><p>Somehow, through the stumbling and generally coincidental heroics the Mighty Nein are known for, they have been granted a Wish.</p><p>It takes zero signs or spoken words for them to collectively know what they will use it for. In fact, they can barely wait until they’re securely situated in the rented room of an inn before doing what they are all waiting so breathlessly for.</p><p>They all sit in a rough circle on the floor of the rented room, wooden boards creaking underneath them, and turn towards Jester.</p><p>Jester clutches her token of her god tight in both blue hands, closes her eyes tight, and mutters, “Traveller, you better not fuck this up,” before saying in a clear voice, surrounded by the Mighty Nein all holding their collective breath, “I Wish for Mollymauk Tealeaf to return to us alive and wholly himself.”</p><p>There is a gust of warm, gentle wind around all of them, picking up the sheets of the twin bed and circling them, almost glad.</p><p>They all know what an unnatural wind may mean, by now.</p><p>They dare not breathe.</p><p>“I think I’ve made it quite clear that I never left by now, don’t you?”</p><p>Jester opens her eyes with a gasp and seven heads turn as one to look at Mollymauk, sitting cross legged on the bed like he had been there the whole time. He grins brightly at all of them and suddenly they can hardly move.</p><p>“Jester,” he says, sliding off of the bed into the center of the circle and leaning forward to give her a kiss on the already tearstained cheek. “The cards are absolutely lovely. Thank you for showing me.”</p><p>“Oh! Of course, Molly,” she sniffles, still clutching the Traveler’s symbol, and they share a sweet smile.</p><p>Molly’s head snaps to Jester’s left and he narrows his eyes at Beau.</p><p>“Turn around,” he says, suddenly sharp and playful.</p><p>Beau turns around with wide eyes.</p><p>Molly grins. “It suits you.”</p><p>“Oh. Uh, the tattoo? Thanks.”</p><p>“Mine is better, though.”</p><p>“Wh— You dick!”</p><p>Molly laughs at her swearing and looks at Fjord. Fjord looks back at him with an expression of disbelief and sorrow and mostly <em> joy</em>.</p><p>“Were you—” Fjord says, cutting himself off, and Molly drops down to balance on the balls of his bare feet.</p><p>Molly grabs both sides of Fjord’s face. “You,” he says gravely, “would make a <em> terrible </em> circus man.” He gives Fjord a questioning look before a soft kiss on the lips that Fjord returns with a smile. Then he turns on his toes to face Yasha, leaving behind a blushing and smiling Fjord.</p><p>Yasha folds him into a hug as soon as he looks at her, and for a long moment they just hold each other. There are no words needed to make clear the joyful and bittersweet emotions they both feel.</p><p>“Thank you for the flowers,” she murmurs to him at last.</p><p>“Of course,” he says back, just as soft.</p><p>She lets him go and he grins at Veth with a maniacal glint in his eye.</p><p>“Never steal from happy people,” he intones, and Veth tackles him onto the floor, yelling obscenities in multiple languages as she straddles his torso and shakes his shoulders and waves her arms with a look of mock-violence in her eyes. Molly just laughs hysterically, jostling her as she tells him to do more and more physically impossible things in between curses.</p><p>Finally she calms down from her mostly playful rage and lets him up, both of them red and purple respectively from the laughter and yelling. Molly winks at her and she hisses back.</p><p>Now it is Caleb’s turn to gain confirmation that his indoors wind was in fact his old friend.</p><p>“Mollymauk,” Caleb signs with soft eyes and soft hands and damp eyelashes, “Thank you for the book.”</p><p>“My pleasure, Mister Caleb,” Molly says without missing a beat, and Caleb smiles to know that he was right. Then, in a fit of confidence that would have been unknown to a Caleb of the past but is more and more common for the Caleb of the now, Caleb signs <em> can I </em> to Mollymauk with the warmest smile on his face. Molly nods almost before Caleb finishes and then Caleb is pressing forward and kissing Molly, one hand holding the back of his neck.</p><p>Their friends laugh and coo and Beau whistles at them. They both give her twin middle fingers and smile into the kiss before separating.</p><p>“I hope it was the right book,” Mollymauk says, laughing.</p><p>“It was,” Caleb signs with a grin, and gives Mollymauk another quick press of lips before Molly turns away.</p><p>“Caduceus Clay,” Molly says.</p><p>“Mollymauk Tealeaf,” Caduceus responds with. “It’s very nice to finally meet you.’</p><p>“I think so,” Molly says with a smile. “Thank you for the tea and the conversation.”</p><p>“My pleasure,” Caduceus says, and lets out a softly delighted hum as Mollymauk kisses his cheek just as he had days ago after a steaming cup of tea.</p><p>“Now,” Molly says, scooting in between Caleb and Fjord, “I want to know about everything I missed and I can assume the same goes for all of you.”</p><p><em> It’s so good to be back</em>, the wind thinks.</p><p>Mollymauk smiles.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>If anyone got what the title song references please join me in snickering behind our hands. If anyone noticed the cheeky little Princess Bride reference, please join me as well. I am a scoundrel and a nerd and I will never stop.</p><p>The flowers I referenced are Plains Coreopsis and Wild Carrot by name, then New England Aster, Purple Coneflower, and Cardinal Flower. All of which, though a tiny Google search, are wildflowers.</p><p>As always, comments and kudos are appreciated but never required! &lt;3</p></blockquote></div></div>
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